Green Reads

To celebrate Earth Day this month, take the time to read a good book about green living, sustainability, or eco-friendly eating. Here are two titles for you to consider. Both were published in 2007, and they each have a timely connection to our community.

The Carbon Buster’s Home Energy Handbook
By Godo Stoyke
New Society Publishers
www.newsociety.com

Godo Stoyke was the keynote speaker at the recent Summit for Environmental Action sponsored by SCOPE held February 29 at Selby Gardens in Sarasota. More than 150 leaders, activists, and concerned residents participated. Learn more about this event by reading the news brief on page 47.

The Carbon Buster’s Home Energy Handbook is a practical out-line of what to do and what the costs and benefits are for specific efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The 152-page book is easy to read with lots of helpful tables, diagrams, and illustrations.

Godo makes a persuasive case that buying green products and using more efficient technologies can save you money over the long term. He offers comparative charts that detail which carbon busting measures yield the highest returns for the environment and the pocketbook.

The book is full of insightful tidbits about American energy consumption, including details about the amount of carbon used annually by a typical family and the trends related to more efficient forms of transportation and alternative energy.

While government savings bonds may yield a financial return of around five percent per year and pension funds yield more than 10 percent, the carbon-buster strategies described by Godo have an average annual return of 32 percent. At the same time, according to Godo, they allow a typical family to reduce its carbon emissions far below the levels targeted under the Kyoto Protocol.

Godo Stoyke is president of Carbon Busters, Inc., an energy efficiency consulting firm with clients in the U.S. and Europe. He has been living in an off-grid solar-powered home for the last 16 years with his wife and son.

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A Contract with the Earth
By Newt Gingrich and Terry Maple
The John Hopkins University Press
www.press.jhu.edu

Dr. Terry Maple will be visiting Sarasota Thursday, April 10 to speak at Selby Public Library’s Geldbart Auditorium at 1331 First Street. His talk starts at 6pm, and everyone is welcome. Terry will sign copies of his book following his presentation.

A Contract with the Earth promotes the idea of bipartisan environmentalism. While acknowledging that liberals and con-servatives do not agree on many issues, Gingrich and Maple argue that environmental stewardship is a mainstream value that transcends partisan politics.

The authors advance three main premises: environmental leader-ship is integral to American’s role in the world, technologically savvy environmental entrepreneurs can and should be the cornerstone of environmental solutions, and cooperation and incentives must be dramatically increased to achieve workable and broadly supported environmental solutions. Most of the book offers commentary and ideas for advancing these principles in the U.S. A lot of examples cited in A Contract with the Earth come from Florida.

Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the U.S. House of Repre-sentatives from 1994 to 1998. Many people may be surprised to learn that Newt was an en-vironmental studies professor who championed a number of conservation projects in the U.S. and abroad. Terry Maple is CEO of the Palm Beach Zoo and professor of conservation and behavior at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dr. Maple is a former president of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and a coeditor of Ethics on the Ark. He was CEO of Zoo Atlanta from 1985 to 2003.

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